The Legacy of Colonial Borders: Exploitation and the Path to International Solidarity

Borders, as we know them today, are largely a product of colonial history. Pre-colonial societies had territorial perceptions in terms of cultural, linguistic, and ecological zones. However, European colonialism introduced strict, artificial lines to meet economic and political objectives. These borders continue to determine global power balances, limit mobility, and promote conflict. Their legacy is deeply felt not only in former colonized countries, but also among diasporic communities, who navigate life along numerous cultural and legal borders.

The lasting impact of colonial borders appears in the extraction of resources, ecological destruction, and the restriction of global solidarity. Knowing this history is essential in envisioning a world where borders do not divide, but instead respect human and ecological interconnections.

The History of Colonial Borders

Before colonialism, most places functioned with fluid, frequently overlapping borders that allowed for fair trade, migration, and cultural exchange. In Southeast Asia, for example, the nautical character of the region meant that peoples such as the Tagalog, Visayan, and Tausug shared trading and kinship networks throughout what we today refer to as the Philippines, Indonesia, lines on a map.[1]

But with European colonial expansion, these natural configurations were substituted by strict geopolitical boundaries. In the Philippines, for instance, Spanish colonizers consolidated more than 7,000 islands into a centralized colonial state, uprooting local systems of governance and remapping ethnic and territorial borders. This colonial geography was not for the benefit of local communities but for imperial economic interests: enabling resource extraction and missionary domination.

Internationally, instances such as the Berlin Conference of 1884–85 represent the inconsistent nature of colonial border formation. European powers partitioned Africa without consulting the interests of the various cultures within the region. [2] Similarly, the Sykes-Picot Agreement reshaped the Middle East, paving the way for longstanding conflict. [3]

These artificial boundaries continued after formal “independence”, frequently leading to long-standing border conflicts and identity crises. In the Philippines, the government preserved the consolidation of regions brought by Spain and perpetuated during the U.S. occupation. Indigenous communities such as the Lumad and Bangsamoro people have traditionally challenged these externally created state boundaries, which disregarded ancestral territories and self-determination.[4]

Borders as a Tool of Control and Separation

Borders not only mark territory, they also regulate movement. Visa regimes, passports, and immigration legislation are devices that restrict mobility, with a disproportionate impact on people from the Global South. For the Filipinos, this manifests in the sheer number of overseas workers. More than 2.12 million Filipinos labor abroad on temporary labor contracts,[5] often subjected to discriminatory immigration policies, wage theft, and labor exploitation.

Filipino-Canadians, for example, have long criticized Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program and Live-In Caregiver Program, both of which permit entry only under harsh, frequently exploitative conditions. Caregivers, mostly women, suffer from isolation, separation from family, and insecure residency status, despite years of work that sustain Canadian families.[6]

These labor migration systems are shaped by colonial histories. American colonization of the Philippines provided avenues for Filipino domestic workers and nurses to migrate as well as set up the nation as a labor-exporting economy.[7] These processes divide families, compelling transnational motherhood, and watering down community solidarity.

Borders also split Indigenous and ethnic communities. In Mindanao, the creation of internal administrative borders and land titling systems dislocated indigenous communities, making them vulnerable to land grabbing and militarization. This fragmentation cuts off unity among marginalized groups who might otherwise unite against shared oppression.

The Exploitation of Land, Resources, and Labor

Colonial borders were designed to facilitate extraction, not protection. During Spanish and American occupation, the Philippines became a raw material exporter: sugar, tobacco, wood, and minerals. That legacy continues. Mindanao mining concessions, usually awarded to foreign corporations, displace Lumad communities and destroy ecosystems. The militarization that comes with these projects reflects a continuation of colonial practices under a new name.[8]

The Philippines annually loses an estimated 47,000 hectares of forest to logging and mining where much of the resources is for export markets.[9] These extractive activities started with colonialism and continue with global capitalism, made possible by the borders that protect corporate interests at the expense of Indigenous rights.

Even the climate crisis is defined by these histories. Filipino climate activists have brought to the forefront how carbon emissions of the Global North devastate archipelagic countries such as the Philippines with intensified typhoons, sea-level rise, and coral bleaching.[10] The Philippine experience of climate injustice underscores the urgent need for ecological solidarity across borders.

Imagining a World Without Colonial Borders

What would it mean to live in a world not defined by colonial borders? To imagine a world without colonial borders is not simply to dream of a map without lines. There is a need to challenge the material conditions and power structures that created those lines. Borders were not created as neutral administrative tools; they were created to protect capital, enable resource extraction, and divide the working classes, ultimately protecting political power. These borders served the interests of the ruling classes through the segmentation of labor, segregation of struggles, and the validation of unequal distribution of power and land.

The way immigrants are treated today, especially under violent regimes like the Trump administration through fascist forces like ICE, makes this clear. Black and brown communities are aggressively targeted - raided, detained, deported, and dehumanized - not because our people threatened safety, but because our labor was extracted and their lives deemed expendable. These processes are not exceptions; they are extensions of colonial logics. Borders continue to be manipulated to serve ruling class interests - maintaining profit, controlling populations, and silencing resistance.

As Indigenous peoples have said time and again, in a world without borders, land is not a commodity. Instead, land would be collectively cared for, with its use and stewardship decided by those who live and labor on it. The Indigenous peoples of the Philippines, for example, have long practiced communal land management systems that prioritize reciprocity and sustainability. These practices are based on collective survival, not profit.

Colonial borders also impose labor segmentation. They decide who is allowed to move, who is allowed to work, and under what terms. Filipino labor export is a natural consequence of economic arrangements that push workers to go abroad, but with their complete exclusion from rights in the country where they work. In a borderless world not governed by capital, freedom of movement would be for human necessity and solidarity and not for visa allocations or business needs.

Without colonial borders, the global division of labor would be reimagined. Rather than states competing to provide cheap labor and raw materials to multinational companies, communities would be structured around fair production and distribution of commodities. Labor would not be exploited across racialized and gendered divisions. The Hong Kong Filipina domestic worker, the Manila garment worker, and the farmer in Central Luzon would no longer be competing against each other in a global race to the bottom—they would be in the same struggle for decent work and life.

This vision would also require an end to militarization and surveillance at the borders. The Philippines' deployment of armed forces to police ancestral domains, silence opposition, and secure corporate ventures illustrates how borders separate people as "citizens" and "enemies," "legitimate owners" and "intruders." A future without borders would translate into demilitarization and providing safety based on mutual care and cooperation.

The world without borders we must imagine cannot be a utopia. In order to achieve it, it must be grounded in the reality that current systems cannot deliver justice. To reach it, we must reorganize social relations around collective ownership, democratic participation, and ecological stewardship. We need to challenge the world as it is, and act in the interests of the majority, the working class, and not in the interest of the few. It must not be just about tearing down walls but also about building a new foundation.

The Role of International and Class Solidarity

International solidarity is essential to break down the structures that perpetuate borders as mechanisms of domination and exploitation. Beyond simple sympathy or charity, it is the recognition of the shared struggle created by colonialism and capitalism. When workers, migrants, and land defenders join forces across borders, we do not merely resist oppression, we already threaten the global system that benefits from division and inequality. This is why they try so hard to suppress us. 

At the center of this solidarity is class. The dominant classes, no matter if they're in the global North or South, uphold power by splitting the working majority along lines of race, gender, nationality, and legal status. But if the working class can identify its common interest across borders, then we can become a powerful force that can challenge all forms of exploitative systems, including the imposition of borders. Class solidarity enables us to transcend national frameworks and understand clearly who profits from our suffering and who we must stand with.

Solidarity means linking the struggles of Filipino workers in Turtle Island, Indigenous peoples resisting militarization in Mindanao and across the globe, and Palestinians resisting occupation and displacement. They are not separate injustices despite the differences in individual expressions. They are manifestations of a global system that values profit and state control over life, land, and dignity. The same power that imposes low wages and vulnerable status on migrant workers in the West is the same power that displaces rural communities in the Philippines and maintains apartheid in Palestine.

To envision and create a world outside colonial borders, we must create actual alliances across them. Solidarity helps us resist fragmentation, share resources, learn from each other's movements, and act together. Filipino solidarity with international movements runs deep from the days of support for South African liberation in the apartheid era and continuing today with the organizing of youth in cooperation with Black Lives Matter and Indigenous land defenders in Canada. These actions express an emerging realization that class, race, gender, and colonial history cannot be isolated from each other and neither can our struggles.

Breaking Borders, Building Solidarity

The colonial creation of borders has left a painful legacy: one of isolated communities and continued exploitation of land and labor. But there are alternative philosophies rooted in indigenous wisdom, international and class solidarity, and ecological care that can lead us into the better world we imagine.

By learning from the Filipino experience, both in the Philippines and in the diaspora, we can have a glimpse of the potential future where borders no longer separate, but where people gather together in mutual responsibility for one another and the planet.

Confronting the colonial legacy of borders means having a global reckoning. From the Palestinian struggle for liberation to the Lumad struggle for ancestral land, people are standing up to take back their rights. Decolonizing borders is not simply a matter of redrawing maps, it's about reimagining the personal, political, and economic relationships that make freedom possible. International and class solidarity is how we string these struggles together by knowing that the very same systems that oppress one of us, oppress all of us. Whether we struggle for climate justice, workers' rights, or decolonization, our solutions need to cross the borders that were never intended to benefit us. Only through collective struggle can we start to create a world based not on exclusion and domination, but on justice, care, and genuine liberation.

SOURCES

1. Ota, A. (2019). Role of State and Non-state Networks in Early-Modern Southeast Asian Trade. In: Otsuka, K., Sugihara, K. (eds) Paths to the Emerging State in Asia and Africa. Emerging-Economy State and International Policy Studies. Springer, Singapore.

2. Lawal, S. (2025, February 26). Colonising Africa: What happened at the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885? Al Jazeera.

3. Al Jazeera. (2016). Sykes-Picot: The map that spawned a century of resentment.

4. Rodil, R. B. (1994). The Minoritization of Indigenous Communities of Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago.

5. Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA). (2023). Overseas Employment Statistics.

6. George, C. (2011). Federal government tightens live-in caregiver regulations. CMAJ: Canadian Medical Association Journal, 183(9), E539–E540.

7. Eugenio, L. J. (2024, October 21). From US reign to brain drain: The mass emigration of Filipino nurses to the United States. Harvard International Review.

8. Danan, T. (2018, December 14). 'It gets scary': Indigenous schools feel heat in restive Mindanao. Al Jazeera.

9. Philippine Clearing House Mechanism. (n.d.). Trends and threats.

10. Tan, M. J. (2021, October 1). "In the end, what we need is justice": Born into the climate crisis. The Elders.